Slags by Emma Jane Unsworth review – An affronting lens on life as a teenager in the 90s
A must-read for anyone who experienced teenage life in the 90s and early 00s.
Slags by Emma Jane Unsworth: Key details
- Publish date: 29 January 2026 (paperback), May 2025 (hardback)
- Genre: Drama
- Publisher: Borough Press
- Available formats: Hardback, paperback audio and ebook
- Series/standalone: Standalone
- Length: 288 pages
Blurb: It’s the 1990s. Sarah is 15, obsessed with sex, getting drunk on Malibu, and her teacher, Mr Keaveney.
Fast forward: Sarah is 41, the last of the party girls. But the mad nights out are losing their shine. Craving adventure, she sets off with her sister Juliette on a whisky-fuelled campervan trip across Scotland.
They know all the dark corners of each other’s history – and it’s time to dig up some demons, kicking and screaming. Because the things that once defined us shouldn’t define us forever… should they?
Slags by Emma Jane Unsworth: The review
Sarah is 15. She’s in love with her English teacher – and she’s fairly sure he’s in love with her too. Forger her GCSEs; all that matters is that she ends up with him. And she will: she’s got a plan.
Nearly 30 years later, Sarah’s in her 40s, and she’s on a road trip with her sister. She loves her sister, but god, there’s a lot of history between them. And some of it is hard to talk about. All these years later, it’s time to confront some very uncomfortable truths about their teenage years.
Slags flips between these two timelines, letting us into the innermost thinkings of both teenage Sarah and adult Sarah. It’s revealing and confronting, with Sarah’s self-consciousnesses, flaws and anxieties plain to see. You’ll no doubt connect with them; you’ll cringe and you’ll groan, but likely only because you’ve felt the same way at some point in your life.
Sarah isn’t perfect – in fact, sometimes she’s a bit of an idiot, both as a teenager and an adult. But that’s what I like so much about Slags; it’s real, it’s raw, it’s life. It’s beautifully written, too, with some of the best, most natural dialogue I’ve read, and a story that’s by no means action-packed but still keeps you turning the pages as a result of its standout prose.
Slags reminds me of We Pretty Pieces of Flesh, which I read last year. It’s another lens on the life of a teenage girl, warts and all, and it’s also very much of a time, capturing what it was like to be a teen in the 90s and early 2000s. It’s nostalgic, leaving us hungry for a different time – but also emotionally brutal enough that you’ll be very glad those years are behind you.
With thanks to Words, Wine and Wit Book Club and Borough Press for providing me with a copy of Slags.
Discover more from What The Book
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
